Work hard means playing hard as well. The team is under a lot of work/stress and needed some time off for some fun. Thanks to the Christiansburg's awesome frisbee golf course we got the chance for some much needed time off and some fun. The team has been very productive with journals, conference papers and defenses! What am awesome team. Great job all!

Our team (8 students, Dr. Joyce & Dr. Tarazaga) is headed down to Orlando Florida to the annual "IMAC XXXIV A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics". Our group will be presenting on a myriad of topics including: noise estimation, tracking and classification of humans in a built environment, model reduction, violin measurements and modeling, drag reduction, gunshot classification, and a novel technique for stress detection. The list of the papers is below and in our publication section!

We are excited to represent Virginia Tech and our Mechanical Engineering Department at IMAC.

We are excited to find out that Dr. Steve Anton is a recipient of the Young Investigator Program Award of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Click here to see the announcement of the AFOSR YIP 2016.

Learn more about Dr. Anton here and about his very cool lab the Dynamic and Smart Systems Laboratory here.

Mohammad Albakri with the assistance of Mico Woolard prepare a one-of-a-kind intelligent insulated rail joint at Norfolk Southern. As part of our ongoing work with with Dr. Ahmadian of the Railway Technology Laboratory (RTL) an affiliated laboratory of the Association American Railroads (AAR), VAST has prepared two intelligent insulated rail joints capable of detecting damage and defects during operations. The joints, one which will reside on a rail section in Roanoke Virginia under the auspice of Norfolk Southern and the other headed shortly to the track at TTCi, will be long term testbeds for proof of concept of the technology. We are very thankful to Norfolk Southern, in particular Brad Kerchof, John Wachsmuth, Guy Kageals and Kevin Conn for their help with getting rail sections for the insulated joints and all the extra work to actually put these together and finally install them on a track. We are also thankful to Dave Davis at TTCi for providing the insulated joints.

The technology developed at VAST uses piezoceramic augmented rail joints to measure the mechanical impedance of the insulated joint and determines deviations from a healthy baseline signal that can be used to alert of incipient damage or unhealthy changes in performance. By using these domain coupled techniques the mechanical impedance changes can be obtained in a straightforward manner by measurement of the coupled electrical impedance across the piezoceramics. The joints have piezoceramic patches in several locations across the insulated joint including the the joint bar, rail sections and bolts.

Gil gave the inaugural talk to the Distinguished Lecture & Celebration of Virginia Tech's Computational Modeling and Data Analytics (CMDA) Degree.For those of you that don't know who Dr. Strang is I recommend you visits his homepage, books and online courses.

Here is avery brief bio from the program : Gilbert Strang, Professor of Mathematics at MIT, is renowned for fundamental contributions to Finite element methods, wavelets, applied mathematics, and linear algebra. His articles, books, and videos have changed the way we think about these fields, and inspired countless scientists and engineers.

Dr. Tarazaga is one of 57 scientist to receive the Young Investigator Award this year from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). His work entitled "Adaptive Structural Vibrations for Multifaceted Motivity" will sponsor a 3 year research program on traveling waves for multifunctional activities.

The award, as stated by the AFOSR, is intended to "... foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering."

Dr. Tarazaga is honored by the award and his team is eager to get to work! For more details on the topic please visit Virginia Tech's College of Engineering website here.

Tarek and Jeff, both undergraduates, present their research of this semester on variable stiffness structures using smart materials. Their goal is to build adaptive sensors. Their work was entitled "3D Printed Beam with SMA based variation of boundary conditions." Sriram Malladi (PhD Student) supervised their work. The work was also carried out in collaboration with Dr. Williams who runs the DREAMS Lab at VT.